Marketing citizenship: pushing green-card exchange

Guadalupe Prado used to celebrate the Fourth of July as this country's Independence Day: carne asada and hot dogs on the grill, the grandkids playing outside, neighbors and fireworks.

But now, the day holds new meaning: "It's the Independence Day of the country where I live and that adopted me."

After 25 years of living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident, Prado became a citizen.

Locally and across the nation, people like Prado are targeted by a network of organizations that want to move this country's legal permanent residents – who are eligible to become residents now, without further congressional action – into the ranks of citizens.

The immigration overhaul bill making its way through Congress and getting splashy headlines nearly daily would affect some 11 million undocumented people. But the number of immigrants who are permanent residents, or green-card holders, is nearly as large. There are approximately 8.5 million permanent residents – 220,000 of them in Orange County.

"There's very little press devoted to this group. It's not sexy like undocumented immigrants. But a lot of energy has been devoted to it," said Eric Cohen, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco.

Major philanthropic foundations are funding a nationwide campaign to reach legal residents and encourage them to trade in their green cards for U.S. passports. Advocates say citizenship benefits both the immigrants and the country.

There's new collaboration among organizations that have the same goals, both locally and nationally. Nonprofits are joining with businesses to lend a hand, with some companies bringing immigration fairs, classes and other resources directly to the workplace. And technology is playing a bigger role than ever, with a new interactive website and phone apps, including one released this week, aimed at helping residents apply and pass the citizenship test.

"They could become citizens tomorrow if they want to," said Marc Fest, a Miami-based communications consultant for the New Americans Campaign, which brings together more than 80 organizations across the country and has helped more than 52,000 residents apply for citizenship since 2011.

Partners include The California Endowment, a private, a statewide health foundation serving poor communities. Big funders have committed more than $20 million for the first three years, Fest said. They include the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations, founded by philanthropist George Soros.

Not all organizations are working under the same umbrella, but they are crisscrossing their ideas, resources and in some cases money to identify legal permanent residents and help them fill out the application, seek a fee waiver if they qualify and study for the required civics test.

"There are a lot of moving pieces and a lot of people who are involved," said Maricela Montoya, staff attorney for the Santa Ana-based Public Law Center. The pro bono law firm helps with citizenship fairs funded by other grants, including the Carnegie Corp., which on the Fourth of July took out a full-page ad in The New York Times saluting well-known naturalized citizens.

Montoya herself didn't become a citizen until 2011.

"I had a green card growing up," said Montoya, 28. "I became a citizen the same year I graduated as an attorney. ... I've been here most of my life. But it wasn't at the forefront of my mind. Once I was in law school, I understood the system and how important it was."

There are many reasons why people put off citizenship, according to those who work with immigrants. There's the cost: $680. The application: 10 pages and daunting to some. And other challenges: language barriers, a civics test, lack of information, lack of education and emotional attachments to one's country of birth.

To assist them, advocates are employing different tools. One of them is a free interactive website called CitizenshipWorks, which includes tutorials on the naturalization process and the civics test.

"In the old model, you would have to have one volunteer per person and not all of them were lawyers. Now groups are beginning to use the website," said Mark O'Brien, executive director of Pro Bono Net in New York, one of the national partners of the New Americans Campaign. "We can then have one volunteer with five or more people."

The website is available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese.

In May, the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, formerly known as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, held its first workshop dedicated to helping Orange County's Chinese permanent residents and introducing them to CitizenshipWorks. About 20 residents attended the Irvine event, according to a spokesman.

A companion to the CitizenshipWorks website is a new free phone app, available on iTunes. The app includes possible questions for the citizenship civics test, a checklist feature to help people track what they need to apply and a list of about 900 organizations nationwide.

Meanwhile, a new project with the same goal of helping prospective new citizens launched in Miami last spring and expanded last week to Los Angeles and Orange County. The Bethlehem Project partners organizations with businesses willing to offer onsite services, such as English or civics classes.

AltaMed, which has nine medical and dental health clinics serving poorer communities in Orange County, is one of the project participants. The company estimates about 100 of its 2,000 employees in Southern California are legal permanent residents.

"AltaMed itself was born out of the social justice movement in the '60s and '70s," said Bob Turner, AltaMed vice president of human resources. "We believe that citizenship is the gateway to all those other sorts of things around social justice. The way you change processes is to vote. And obviously, you have to be a citizen to vote."

Cohen, of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said the naturalization drive is nonpartisan.

Tony Lu, CitizenshipWorks website project coordinator in New York, said: "If we value a vibrant democracy that has a lot of engagement and debate on social issues and policy, there are at least 8 million people not participating because they don't have the right to vote. We should all be welcoming them. Otherwise we're not getting everyone's voice in the debate."